BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. WHATEVER my ambition, it is not my present purpose to offer to the reader either a history of my father's mind, or a critical analysis of his works. I have too much respect for the name he has transmitted me to throw any gratuitous discredit upon it by attempting a task which, looking to the very high power essential to its due fulfilment, I fairly confess myself unequal to. So far, however, as the reader is concerned, I need not regret my inability. Some of those fine spirits with whom my father was associated in life have sanctioned my attempt by gracing it with the expression of their opinions of him, and these, with the eloquent tribute to his genius and character, which the youngest but one of the most estimated of his contemporaries, Mr. Bulwer, has done me the kindness of sketching out, render all apology to the readers of the present paper superfluous. All that I propose to do is briefly to state the few and slightly diversified circumstances of my father's passage through his "brief mortality," which, like that of most literary men, was made up of what is much less strange than fiction. From early youth his mind was so intently occupied in the search after abstract moral and political truth, and in the endeavor by its enunciation to raise the character and better the condition of his fellowcreatures, that little time remained to him for that various communication with the outer world which is generally understood as constituting the interesting' matter of man's life. My father, who was born April 10, 1778, at Maidstone, in Kent, was the youngest son of the Rev. William Hazlitt, a Dissenting Minister of the Unitarian persuasion: a man who throughout the course of a life of eightyfour years merited and enjoyed a degree of respect which few men obtain, and fewer still deserve. The following sketch of his life from Murch's very interesting History of the Presbyterian Ministers', will, I think, be considered quite relevant to my subject, as giving some account of the man under whose instruction and example my father's mind was formed in the love of freedom and honesty. "The Rev. William Hazlitt, M. A., was born at Shann Hill, near Tipperary, 1737. At about the age of nineteen he went to Glasgow University, where he remained five years, and obtained the degree of Master of Arts. Though brought up in orthodox principles, at the time of his quitting the University he was an Unitarian. His first settlement was with the Presbyterian congregation at Wisbeach, in 1764, where he remained two years. Here he married Miss Loftus, of that town, by whom he had seven children, three of whom with their mother survived him. From Wisbeach he removed to Marshfield, and thence to Maidstone, where he remained nearly ten years, during which time he enjoyed the acquaintance of several eminent men, and frequently met Dr. Franklin. From Maidstone, he removed, in 1780, to the charge of a congregation at Bandon, in the county of Cork, where he continued three years. In this place he exerted himself in behalf of the American prisoners confined at Kinsale, and his manly exposure, in the public prints, of the cruelties exercised towards them by the soldiery, considerably improved their condition. On the close of the war with America, he removed from Bandon to New York with his wife and family, where he arrived in May 1783, and shortly after proceeded to Philadelphia. On his way to that city, the Assembly of the States General for New Jersey, then sitting at Burlington, sent a deputation to invite him to preach before them, which he did. At Philadelphia he stayed fifteen months, and besides preaching occasionally at various places of worship there, he delivered during the winter, in the college, a course of lectures on the evidences of Christianity, which were exceedingly well received. From Philadelphia he went to preach, by invitation, to a congregation at Boston; but a report of his heterodox principles arriving before him, prevented a settlement amongst them. Mr. Hazlitt's visit to this town was not however in vain; for in a short time he was chiefly instrumental in forming the first Unitarian church at Boston. Here the University offered to confer on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity, which he declined. He also published various tracts in support of Unitarian principles; and having remained in America two years, preparing the way for the subsequent exertions of Dr. Priestly, whose acquaintance he enjoyed, he returned with his family to England, and became pastor of the Presbyterian congregation at Wem, in Shropshire. In this place he resided upwards of twenty-six years, and published three volumes of sermons, which had a rapid and extensive sale. In 1813 he retired from the Ministry, and lived some time at Addlestone, in Surrey, afterwards at Bath, and finally at Crediton, where, in 1820, he died." Immediately after settling at Wem, as stated in the above sketch, my grandfather proceeded to the task of educating his son William, now nearly six years of age; à task which the docility and vivid comprehension of the pupil rendered not merely easy, but delightful. I have a miniature portrait of my father painted at about this time by his brother John: the mild intelligence of the countenance bears a marked resemblance to those of the children in some of Correggio's pictures, and was a faithful indication of the mind within. I shall here do myself the pleasure of extracting from an article in the Monthly Repository," a passage bearing on this part of my subject, and which appears to me extremely beautiful. It is as follows: - "The most pure and perfect state of human existence, the most etherial in mind, being fresh from the creative hand; the most enthusiastic and benevolent of heart, being yet uncontaminated by the outer world and all its bitter disappointments, the sweetest and yet the most pathetic, were it only from the extreme sense of beauty, is the early youth of genius. * By the author of the 'Exposition of the False Medium,' &c. Alone in the acuteness of its general sensibility-unsympathised with in its peculiar view of nature; its heart without utterance, and its intellect a mind penetrated by the warmth of the dawning sun, but unopened by its meridian beams,-the child of genius wanders forth into the fields and woods, an embodied imagination; an elemental being yearning for operation, but knowing not its mission. A powerful destiny heaves for development in its bosom; it feels the prophetic waves surging to and fro; but all is indistinct and vast: caverned, spell-bound, aimless and rife with sighs. It has little retrospection, and that little of no importance; its heart and soul are in the future, a glorified dream. Memory, with all its melancholy pleasures and countless pains, is for the old, and chiefly for the prematurely old; but youth is a vision of the islands of the blest; it tells its own fairy-tale to itself, and is at once the hero and inventor. It revels in the radiance of years to come, nor ever dreams that the little daisy on the lawn, so smilingly beheld, or so tenderly gathered from its green bed, shall make the whole heart ache with all the past, when it meets the eye some years hence. If this be more or less the case with youth in general, it is so in a pre-eminent degree with the youth of genius. At this early period of the life of such a being, impressions of moral and physical beauty exist in ecstatic sensation rather than in sentiment: a practical feeling and instinct, not a theory or rule of right. Conscious only of its everworking sensibility, and dim aspirations, boundless as dim,-utterly unconscious of its talent, powers, or means of realizing its feelings, the child of genius yearns with a deep sense of the divinity of imperishable creation, with hopes that sweep high over the dull earth and all its revolving graves; and lost in beatific abstraction, it has a positive foretaste, of immortality. "Such we may affirm-if the reader will add that intensity of comprehension which pierces beneath the deepest roots of the heart, and to which all words are but the earth-like signs, the finger-marks of mortality pointing to the profound elements of human nature,-such was the early youth of William Hazlitt." In 1787 the future teacher of mankind was put to a day-school in Wem, of his proceedings at which I shall leave him to speak for himself in the following letter to his brother in London, written early in the next year, and which appears to me a very characteristic and delightful one. I only regret that I have so few of his letters, but his own correspondence was at all times very limited, and the exceptions to his throwing the letters he received into the fire as soon as read, were very rare : ، DEAR BROTHER, "Wem, Saturday morning, "March, 1788. "I received your letter this morning. We were all glad to hear that you were well, and that you have so much business to do.* We cannot be happy without being employed. I want you to tell me whether you go to the Academy or not and what pictures you intend for the exhibition. Tell the exhibitioners to finish the exhibition soon that you may soon come and * My uncle John had recently established himself in London, in Great Russell street, as a portrait-painter, in which profession he very rapidly attained considerable eminence and an extensive practice.. |